Everything else about the castle is dead. Dark stone, rotting lichen, the steadydrip-dripof condensation and mold.
I reach for the note, only for a knock to sound at the door.
My heart leaps into my throat. I pull back and glance around the room for something more substantial than a towel. My eyes land on a silk dressing gown in shades of ice and hoarfrost. I hurry to throw it over my shoulders and tie it tightly. In the tarnished mirror, my hair is dripping wet. A small groan of frustration echoes from my throat.
The last word I would ever use for the gauzy fabric issubstantial.
The knock comes again. Harder this time.
“Come in!”
“I was just coming to say—I—Addie!”
I turn at the sound of Bram’s voice, the catch of shock.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize—” He ducks from the door, red creeping up his cheeks.
“It’s fine. I have clothes on, Bram. You can come in.”
Curls sweep across his face when he slips into the room, gently closing the door behind him. “Sorry, I just—” He clears his throat. “Did you get one of these?”
He waves a slip of paper. The edges scalloped and tinged with red. Its twin rests atop my pillow. Bram passes me the paper. It is cold in my hand.
“Read it,” he says, voice like whiskey in my belly.
A midwinter masque. To be held when the moon has turned to blood. Blackbourne Castle.
Rascal lifts his head from where he was sleeping on the duvet and groans his disapproval. But Bram is silent. He watches me, for what I don’t know.
“We can’t go,” he says finally.
“What do you mean? Who did this come from anyway?” I flip it over, searching it for a name,hername, anything. But it is blank.
“Who do you think?”
There is a bitter edge to his voice, and it makes me angry. “You’ve been an absolute brute to my mother, do you know that? A brute. You’re beginning to act a whole lot like Ransom.”
His eyes sliver with shadow. Before I can take my next breath, he is across the room, pressing me against the wall. A dull ache starts deep in my chest, anger mixed with something else. Oil in water. His eyes are like a wolf before a hunter, hungry and afraid, all at the same time. The chill of him cools the water on my skin, a shiver cascading down to the small of my back.
“Say it again,” he growls. “That I am just like that no-good, deceitful, arrogant son of a bitch.Sayit.”
My stomach flutters from the touch of his skin on mine, the softness of his breath against my throat. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” His hands leave the wall and smooth down the sides of my waist, my skin catching fire as they go.
I suck in air, lightheaded and desperately eager.
“Bram…” My voice is thick, choked with roots of desire and ache.
It is all the encouragement he needs.
He curls his arms around the swell of my bottom and swoops me onto the bed. Rascal protests loudly and jumps to the floor. Laughter ripples from my throat. Real, true laughter, before it is smothered by Bram’s mouth, which is somehow as warm as brewed tea. He is far gentler than Ransom, reverent almost. As though I am something holy.
His hands blaze up my breasts and curl around my chin, and his tongue slides past my lips. He tastes exactly how I wished he would. Spring sunshine and dew, ink-stained pages, and something like lemons. Something I cannot place.
The ache inside me deepens, the one I have felt for days but never knew how to name. For Ransom, it came easier. I knew what to call that: contagion, infection, lust. But with Bram, it is somehow different. A slow kind of falling. His hands slide along me, as though they were meant to. Like whatever we were molded from is made of the same stuff and we are finally fitting together after so many years apart.
I yank at the collar of his shirt, and he rewards me with a low growl from the back of his throat, flipping me on top of him. His hands are cold through the fabric of my dressing gown, his hips pressed against me. I inhale—sharp and sweet. Feel his lips drag along my jaw, teeth snicking at my skin. His fingers brush against my knee, the soft skin of my thigh. I gasp, his teeth wicked against my neck.
